Very few cars get prettier with age, except the DB7, Jag XJ* and XK to name a few.

However this is one of the cars which belongs in the other category, were a car starts off beautiful and ends up ungainly, fat and well… almost ugly.
The Alfa Spider, was made between 1966 and 1993, however the ‘proper’ boat-tail style of Spider, was only in production for three years.

The series 1 looked like this, (The wheels aren’t original)

The series 4 ended like this,

I honestly don’t know what Alfa were thinking.

Over the years they added safety bumpers, side skirts and bigger alloys to try and keep the car looking fresh. But the biggest mistake is the Kamm-tail, ok yes you had a bigger boot… but it’s a sportscar. The Duetto wasn’t the fastest car in the world but it had the looks. So you got more storage space, but does it really matter, when you compromise everything else?

The kamm-tail is one of the worst things to ever happen to car design, even Chris Bangle was less of a disaster.

I maybe pushing my luck here, posting a car which costs £1.3 million… it also needs full re-commisioning.

This is Aston’s first (that we know of) mid-engined car, they had intended to do a limited run of the car, but the new owner of Aston at the time decided to end the program.

The picture at the top is what the car looks like now, but it was bought by a Saudi Prince in 1980 who made the modifications. It originally looked like this…

Many changes have been made during the 17 years that has elapsed from the cars unveiling. The silver over light grey machine in now painted in two tone metallic green, whilst the brown leather of the interior had been replaced by stone leather piped in brown. Other additions to the car include (rather bling) gold plating trim to switches and gear stick, roof mounted stereo, ugly but useful rear view mirrors and a TV showing the rear-view of the car. This picture shows the extent that the doors extend into the sill area to enable easier entry and exit from the low seating position.

Interestingly the car has lost the fuel injection system initially fitted and now has quad Weber carburettors. These are I think of the side draught type and are paired up within the ‘V’ unlike the down draught type fitted in a line down the centre as would be found in a Vantage.

So yes it needs a hell of alot of work doing to it, but it’s worth every penny.